Ivan Efimovich Orlov (Russian: Иван Ефимович Орлов; Galich, Kostroma Oblast, – Moscow, after 1936 ОРЛОВ
''iphlib.ru'') was a Russian

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

, a forerunner of

relevant Relevant is something directly related, connected or pertinent to a topic; it may also mean something that is current. Relevant may also refer to: * Relevant operator, a concept in physics, see renormalization group * Relevant, Ain, a commune ...

and other substructural logics, and an industrial chemist. The date of his death is unknown, but is most likely between 1936 and 1937.

Education and Scientific Career

Orlov studied at the Natural Sciences Faculty of

Moscow University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

. His academic career began in 1916, when he published several papers related to the method of

inductive reasoning Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which a general principle is derived from a body of observations. It consists of making broad generalizations based on specific observations. Inductive reasoning is distinct from ''deductive'' re ...

and the notion of

inductive proof Mathematical induction is a method for proving that a statement ''P''(''n'') is true for every natural number ''n'', that is, that the infinitely many cases ''P''(0), ''P''(1), ''P''(2), ''P''(3), ... all hold. Informal metaphors help ...

. For 7 years beginning 1916, he published no scientific work, presumably because of the political turmoil of the era. In the 1920s, he taught in the newly established

Communist Academy The Communist Academy (Russian: Коммунистическая академия, transliterated ''Kommunisticheskaya akademiya'') was a higher educational establishment and research institute based in Moscow. It included scientific institutes of ...

, and was an officer at the Chemical Institute. In 1923 Orlov resumed his academic activity, becoming very productive. Most of his papers were published in leading Soviet ideological journals, where he waxed polemical in the manner typical of that place and time. Orlov's work bore on the philosophy of mathematics and logic, specifically on the so-called dialectical logic,

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

in nature. He wrote on the theory of probability, psychology, theory of music, and on chemical engineering.

Logic

Analyzing the development of the natural sciences, he sought to uncover their specific "logic." According to Orlov, the laws of thought should be treated as formal rules, bounded by the laws of

identity Identity may refer to: * Identity document * Identity (philosophy) * Identity (social science) * Identity (mathematics) Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film * ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...

and contradiction. (When Orlov wrote this, the invention of natural deduction, the sequent calculus, and the

semantic tableau In proof theory, the semantic tableau (; plural: tableaux, also called truth tree) is a decision procedure for sentential and related logics, and a proof procedure for formulae of first-order logic. An analytic tableau is a tree structure comput ...

x all lay in the future.) We must seek the

semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

relation between antecedent and consequent. The main "contradiction of logic" manifests itself in the linkage of premise and corollary, and requires a logic different from the traditional one. If we insist that a corollary be a necessary condition of the premises then, according to Orlov, we necessarily arrive at a

non-Aristotelian logic Non-classical logics (and sometimes alternative logics) are formal systems that differ in a significant way from standard logical systems such as propositional and predicate logic. There are several ways in which this is done, including by way of ...

dialectical Dialectic ( grc-gre, διαλεκτική, ''dialektikḗ''; related to dialogue; german: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to ...

in nature.

The Logic of Compatibility Propositions

Orlov proposed a logic of just this type in his work "The Logic of Compatibility of Propositions" published in 1928 in a Soviet mathematical journal. This paper analysed the problem of compatibility (noncompatibility) of propositions through the interpretative prism of an implication procedure. He also foresaw the translation of systems with intuitionistic

negation In logic, negation, also called the logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P or \overline. It is interpreted intuitively as being true when P is false, and false ...

into S4

modal logic Modal logic is a collection of formal systems developed to represent statements about necessity and possibility. It plays a major role in philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and natural language semantics. Modal logics extend other ...

with classical

. Orlov's work was very little known for a long time, because his publications, all in Russian, were almost totally unknown outside of the Soviet Union. It is only with the post-World War II rise of what have come to be known as substructural logics (Restall 2000) that Orlov's pioneering role has gradually emerged. Substructural logics, a category including intuitionistic, relevant,

linear logic Linear logic is a substructural logic proposed by Jean-Yves Girard as a refinement of classical and intuitionistic logic, joining the dualities of the former with many of the constructive properties of the latter. Although the logic has also be ...

s, etc., can be obtained by restricting the natural deduction ("structural") rules for

classical logic Classical logic (or standard logic or Frege-Russell logic) is the intensively studied and most widely used class of deductive logic. Classical logic has had much influence on analytic philosophy. Characteristics Each logical system in this class ...

. For example, relevant logic does not employ the structural rule of weakening (also called the rule of monotonicity), and this rule is unlike the other structural rules (Dosen). Orlov believed in a mechanistic reduction of the laws of nature. He castigated the set theory of Georg Cantor, the theory of relativity (he believed in the existence of aether), and the

heliobiology Chronobiology is a field of biology that examines timing processes, including periodic (cyclic) phenomena in living organisms, such as their adaptation to solar- and lunar-related rhythms. These cycles are known as biological rhythms. Chronobio ...

of A. Chizhevsky.

Industrial Chemistry

Around 1928, Orlov ceased publishing logical and philosophical work, turning to industrial

chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...

, specifically the production of bromine and

iodine Iodine is a chemical element with the symbol I and atomic number 53. The heaviest of the stable halogens, it exists as a semi-lustrous, non-metallic solid at standard conditions that melts to form a deep violet liquid at , and boils to a vi ...

, and in translating German works on chemistry into Russian.

Education and Scientific Career

Logic

The Logic of Compatibility Propositions

Industrial Chemistry

References

Further reading